EU clears Canon to buy Belgium's IRIS

Reuters Staff

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BRUSSELS, Feb 18 (Reuters) - The European arm of Japan’s Canon Inc. has won the European Commission’s approval to buy Belgian document recognition company IRIS, the European Union’s competition watchdog said on Monday.

The investigation into the merger, which was put to European regulators in January, focused on markets for portable document scanners, where IRIS and Canon are both present, the Commission said.

“The Commission’s investigation found that the merged entity would continue to face competition from a number of other strong competitors in the relevant office automation equipment and capture software markets,” the Commission said in a statement.

Canon said in September that it would buy IRIS, which makes products such as pen scanners and scanning software, for 70 million euros ($93.45 million).